Roundup: Meth Now Easier to Make; 1 in 5 Teens Share Prescription Drugs; and More

• Something to think about the next time you drug test a youth: one in five teens share prescription drugs (and so do 40% of adults). 
• Making methamphetamine is now easier, thanks to the growing popularity of an alternate, "shake and bake" method. It's easier for addicts to make in small batches and requires only a small amount of pseudophedrine to manufacture -- well under the mandatory limits set in place several years ago to halt meth's spread.  

• An in-depth follow-up story to last week's report of abuses in New York's juvenile prisons on girls being routinely physically abused there, along with letters to the editor on the need for juvenile justice reform, an editorial blaming New York's failure to fix its juvenile prisons on in-fighting between management and unions, and another excoriating the state for its brutal neglect of children and listing specific changes that must be made right away.
• The Michigan House GOP has a plan to gradually privatize its state juvenile justice facilities -- a plan that has been criticized for failing to provide for mental health or substance abuse treatment.
• Three thousand youth in the juvenile justice system in South Carolina will participate in a statewide day of service on September 11, the newly-named National Day of Service, under the auspices of the state's Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). The DJJ is working with community organizations to pull it off.
• The Office of Justice Programs announced $129 million in awards to support youth mentoring. 
• Under the leadership of Judge Karen Lawson, youth in an Ohio juvenile detention center created and maintain a vegetable garden -- and the food they raise is used in the cafeteria. Click on the image at right for story and video.
• Here's an interview with the CEO of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA), Steve Pasierb. Scroll to the bottom for a handy list of PDFA tools for parents, concerned family members, and people in recovery. 
• The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is looking for promising practices that help states keep juvenile status offenders out of detention. OJJDP will be creating a database of such programs.
• The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth just got additional funding from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to continue monitoring alcohol industry marketing for youth -- especially important, given that recent research shows that more alcohol ads are aired on TV shows popular with kids.

Courses

• The Legal Action Center is offering online courses in confidentiality (with continuing education credits). There's a course for front-line workers and another for agency policymakers.

• Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago is offering a five day course in "advanced analytics" for chlid welfare managers. Why? the goal is to help managers become better at analyzing data to effectively implement continuous quality improvements in service delivery. And that's something we can definitely get behind. But hurry - applications are due September 30th, and there's places for only 16 people.